Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Muslim News. Some Thoughts

Teletext, for those not living in Britain, is a news service that is
wholly text based and provides short summaries of what has happened in the news
on any one day.It is run from BBC TV
channels one and two.My experience over
the years has been that any negative Israel related item remains for two days
at a minimum while other items of news will generally stay for no longer than
one.What is particularly dishonest
about the BBC is that on the few occasions I have complained about inappropriately
worded news items my complaint has been dismissed with peremptory disdain and one
sentence: “The BBC is not responsible for any content reproduced by Teletext
which is an independent news company”.So the fact that Teletext could not disseminate its propaganda without
the electronic presence of the BBC is apparently not considered relevant.

I bring this up because on the 6th of August 2012
a most curious thing occurred.

Teletext displayed the following stories (in order of
appearance).There were perhaps ten stories
featured:

Fighting intensifies in Aleppo as fears grow that the Syrian army
will launch a Full-scale assault within days.

Yemen
suicide attacker kills 30 in an attack on a funeral service.

In Pakistan
several police officers have been suspended after they were accused of parading
an unmarried couple, naked, in public.

48 Iranian pilgrims were kidnapped from a bus in the
vicinity of a shrine near the Syrian capital Damascus.

Key Afghan ministers fired after failing to prevent
cross-border shelling from Pakistan
and security lapses resulting in the assassinations of senior officials.

I recently read that there are some 30 conflicts in
the world today, 25 of them involving Islam.It is what Samuel Huntington (The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of the World Order) refers to as fault conflicts. These are communal conflicts
which inevitably deteriorate into violent clashes, ethnic cleansing and war.

In ‘The Islamist’ Ed Husain states that the failure to
conquer Europe is seen as “the unfinished business of Vienna
in 1683” (where 1683 is the date that the Ottomans were turned back from
conquering Europe).By embracing Muslim refugees but refusing to
define what is acceptable within our Western society we may be creating an economically
stronger society but we are not creating a better future.

When Turkey’s
foreign minister publicly reminds his Austrian compatriots that they must not
integrate into their host Austrian society; that their loyalty and identity
remains Muslim and Turkish, it is an issue that we, the infidel fail to deal
with at the cost of our identity.Twenty
million Muslims live in Europe and their
population is expected to double or treble over the next few decades.We refuse to discuss any issues that are intrinsic
to the health of Western Civilisation where they conflict with the cultural
values of our newest subjects. Multiculturalism is the not so new buzzword that
invalidates rational debate.We accept
the totalitarianism of other nations, adhere to their fuzzy definition of
terrorism and embrace their selective application of Human Rights legislation.When human rights conflict with Sharia law we
look away.

We accept their ongoing brutalisation because they are not
our own but by being desensitised to their pain we vicariously brutalise our
own societies. And ours is based on an assumption of progress but the
relentless march towards darkness is possibly mirrored in our own Western States
not because we stone our people to death or beat immodestly dressed women to a
bloodied pulp but because in our confusion of identity we no longer focus on
relieving the stresses within our own society.John McCarthy is a British journalist and broadcaster. He was held in
captivity by Muslim terrorists (in Lebanon) for 1,943 days.He described this mind-set as the casual
cruelty of his Hezbollah jailers.

Slavery, execution for witchcraft, homosexuality and
adultery; mutilation and murder; cruelty, violence and intimidation are a small
part of the acceptable face of the Islamic world that we prefer not to
judge.Our own politically correct
spokespersons warn us against the “American eye for an eye” or “the Old Testament
way.” After Muammar Gaddafi’s butchered body featured on the front page of
every British newspaper we became squeamish after the fact even though we (in
the West) had encouraged the Libyan Civil War.What did we expect?

And that is our problem as well as our failure. We have
abandoned universalism for a carefully defined particularism. Our interests preclude taking responsibility
for the failure of others as we would expect them to behave if they were in our
place.In theological terms it is
defining grace, and therefore mercy, as specific to the chosen. Secular belief
in this entitlement is weirdly sacrosanct.It enables the Left to choose its demons with enthusiastic abandon. It
is the sweetest of ironies that the communications era while facilitating the
prostitution of our beliefs has shown us the evidence of our complicity in the
cruelty of others.

If we looked at the Teletext headlines a little closer we
would notice that an alarming pattern is beginning to emerge.

When Sunni is not killing Shiite and Shiite is not killing
Sunni their attention is focused on us. To quote the Koran “The war with the
descendants of apes and pigs (i.e. Christians and Jews) is a war of religion
and faith." Our failure to demand accountability on our terms has left the
stage to the enemies of Western Civilisation. Their fellow travellers will
make any excuse to scapegoat others for their crimes.